Betty MacDonald Fan Club. Join fans of the beloved writer Betty MacDonald (1907-58). The original Betty MacDonald Fan Club and literary Society. Welcome to Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society - the official Betty MacDonald Fan Club Website with members in 40 countries.
Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Series is beloved all over the world. Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald biography and his very witty interviews on CD and DVD!

Friday, April 7, 2017

Betty MacDonald, the real persons and the agony

Hello 'Pussy' it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking:

The
agony of you — well, one of the many agonies — is that there
are times when you will actually do the right thing, or at least a
defensible thing, and we’ll be left wondering, even more than we did
with other presidents, about what your motivations were, whether they fit
into any truly considered plan or whether your actions amount to the
newest episode of a continuing reality show.

Do you have any idea why we feel so ashamed? I do!

Should I remain in bed, leave my country or fight against the dragon?

( see also the story by Wolfgang Hampel, ' Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say ' )

we know all the 'real' persons in Betty MacDonald's books especially very strange Dorita Hess.

Betty
MacDonald Fan Club members in 40 countries admire Wolfgang Hampel's
fascinating stories, satirical poems and very witty interviews but also
his brilliant friends.

I contributed a letter written by Betty MacDonald's fabulous grandmother Gammy.The
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Memorial Letter Collection is very interesting
and includes the most important letters written by Betty MacDonald,
Mary Bard Jensen, Sydney Bard, Gammy and many other members of the
family.

It's a great feeling to be part of Betty MacDonald Fan Club.

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
told us that Betty MacDonald fan club research team does an excellent
job in supporting him with his several Betty MacDonald projects
especially an updated Betty MacDonald biography.Betty
MacDonald fan club event team is very happy to hear from you and they
got some really great ideas for the next International event.

You'll enjoy it very much.

You can see brilliant Brad Craft.

Seems I'm in this for a hot second. I remember being asked to
participate one day on the street in front of the bookstore where I
work. I didn't think to ask what it was for, or even so much as the
name of the song or the band. Didn't want to be late coming back from
lunch. Silly bugger. The very nice young woman with the green hair
also featured herein happens to work at Magus Books. She mentioned
she'd seen me. Told me the name of the band, and here we are.

We got very interesting new info for updated Betty MacDonald biography.Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to include all
these new details and info in updated Betty MacDonald biography.

If you'd like to join Betty MacDonald fan club you only have to press the join button on Betty MacDonald fan club blog.New Betty MacDonald fan club fans will receive a special Betty MacDonald fan club Welcome gift during April.

I agree with Betty in this very witty Betty MacDonald story Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say by Wolfgang Hampel.

I
can't imagine to live in a country with him as so-called elected
President although there are very good reasons to remain there to fight
against these brainless politics.

The
agony of Donald Trump — well, one of the many agonies — is that there
are times when he will actually do the right thing, or at least a
defensible thing, and we’ll be left wondering, even more than we did
with other presidents, about what his motivations were, whether they fit
into any truly considered plan or whether his actions amount to the
newest episode of a continuing reality show.

Such
is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in
too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for
the pose he needs in the narrative du jour.

There’s
justification for it, absolutely. President Obama had advisers who
wished he’d done something similar, and there were Democrats aplenty —
Hillary Clinton apparently among them — who found his restraint when it
came to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be infuriating, a
surrender of America’s role and moral authority in the world.

But
Trump’s military action makes little sense in the context of most of
what he said in the years before he was elected and much of what he has
done as president so far. Let me get this straight: Obama wasn’t
supposed to draw or be drawn across a red line, not even when the Assad
regime used chemical weapons, but when the regime did that on Trump’s
watch, it crossed “many, many lines,” in his words, and compelled an
American response?

I think the future dinosaur flatulence will be the behaviour of 'Pussy' and his very strange government.Poor World! Poor America! Don't miss these very interesting articles below, please.

The most difficult case in Mrs.Piggle-Wiggle's career

Hello 'Pussy', this is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

You
took calls from foreign leaders on unsecured phone lines, without
consultung the State Department. We have to change your silly behaviour
with a new Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cure. I know you are the most difficult
case in my career - but we have to try everything.......................

Besides him ( by the way the First Lady's place ) his 10 year old son was bored to death and listened to this 'exciting' victory speech.

The old man could be his great-grandfather.

The
boy was very tired and thought: I don't know what this old guy is
talking about. Come on and finish it, please. I'd like to go to bed.Dear 'great-grandfather' continued and praised the Democratic candidate.

The series premiered on September 3,
1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1,
1952.

Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty
attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later
known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John
Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as
Pa Kettle.

Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.

The Riddle of Trump’s Syria Attack

President Trump making a statement about the bombing in Syria at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, FlCredit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

The
agony of Donald Trump — well, one of the many agonies — is that there
are times when he will actually do the right thing, or at least a
defensible thing, and we’ll be left wondering, even more than we did
with other presidents, about what his motivations were, whether they fit
into any truly considered plan or whether his actions amount to the
newest episode of a continuing reality show.

Such
is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in
too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for
the pose he needs in the narrative du jour.

There’s
justification for it, absolutely. President Obama had advisers who
wished he’d done something similar, and there were Democrats aplenty —
Hillary Clinton apparently among them — who found his restraint when it
came to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be infuriating, a
surrender of America’s role and moral authority in the world.

But
Trump’s military action makes little sense in the context of most of
what he said in the years before he was elected and much of what he has
done as president so far. Let me get this straight: Obama wasn’t
supposed to draw or be drawn across a red line, not even when the Assad
regime used chemical weapons, but when the regime did that on Trump’s
watch, it crossed “many, many lines,” in his words, and compelled an
American response?

That’s a “dizzying turnabout,” as Blake Hounshell wrote in Politico,
under the headline “Trump’s Syria Whiplash.” And I can’t square Trump’s
statements over the last two days that the United States can’t stand by
idly in the face of such grotesque suffering with his determination to
bar those who suffer from being accepted as refugees into America. The
babies prompt outrage and heartache when they’re writhing in Syria, but
God forbid they come here.

And so two questions, loud and urgent: Why did he do this now? And, beyond that, who exactly is he?

The
readiest answers unsettle me. It’s impossible to ignore the degree to
which the military strike pushes a slew of unflattering stories about
the Trump administration — its failed attempt to undo Obamacare, the
feuding within its ranks and, above all, the probes into possible
collusion between Trump’s associates and the Russian government — to the
side of the page. Nothing drowns out scandal like the fire and fury of
59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The
notion that military action salvages a president on the defensive,
boldly underscoring his role as commander in chief, is nothing new. But
there’s a fresh wrinkle in this case, because those bombs put Trump at
particular odds with Russia at a moment when there’s enormous advantage
in that.

Listen
to the television commentators right now. Read the news. It focuses on
present and looming tensions with Vladimir Putin, not the Putin-Trump
kissy-face that’s been so appalling and fascinating to watch. It’s a
whole new story.

What’s
more, the quickness with which those missiles followed the Assad
regime’s latest atrocity cast Trump in an emphatically decisive light.
It’s precisely the look that he needs right now.

On Friday morning Mike Allen of Axios quoted
an unnamed official in the Trump administration saying that White House
aides were viewing this particular juncture — these last few days — as
“leadership week,” because Trump was not only meeting with the Chinese
president at Mar-a-Lago but had also stood tall at a lectern there on
Thursday night, just after the strike against Syria, to utter these
sweeping words: “God bless America and the entire world.”

To read Allen’s succinct account
is to get the haunting sense that the administration isn’t talking
about — or, for that matter, evaluating — the substance of what Trump
did in Syria. The official is talking about a script that Trump is
reading and a role that he’s playing. I fear that Trump is relishing
that role too much, and that his enjoyment explains the turnabout. How
shocking, really, was Assad’s use of chemical weapons against its
citizens? He’s done it before. What’s changed is that Trump, not Obama,
is now the one in position to send America’s missiles, flex America’s
muscle and feel the titanic power of that.

That
brings me back to the second of the two questions I asked earlier: Who
is this president? Is he guided by any fixed philosophies or is he moved
by moods and operating on whim? This, too, isn’t a concern singular to
Trump’s presidency, but it’s a concern that’s amplified in Trump’s
presidency, because his background is so unusual: no government
experience, no military service, a hodgepodge of political positions and
associations over time. On top of which, his performance on the
campaign trail, in debates and in the White House has made clear, time
and again, how woefully uninformed he can be and how blissfully
untroubled by that he is.

A
positive interpretation of these latest developments is that Trump is
someone who’s willing to adjust to a deeper, fresher understanding of
events, to pivot in accordance with circumstances, to learn and to
evolve. Consistency can definitely be overrated. At times it’s just a
euphemism for stubbornness.

But
another take is that Trump isn’t just uninformed but unformed. And
that’s not reassuring at all. As the week went on, there were more and
more reports not just of tension in the White House between Steve Bannon
and Jared Kushner but of extreme acrimony and outright warfare. The
intensity of that collision reflects competing ideologies and
sensibilities, yes, but it also speaks to the stakes.

The winner’s spoils aren’t merely influence over Trump, who, according to a report
in The Times on Friday morning, tilts “one way or the other depending
on the day, or even the hour.” The spoils, it seems, are the opportunity
to mold him utterly, because nearly 80 days into his administration, he
remains a wet piece of clay.

perfect Partners

How Trump Can Improve the Messy U.S.-Chinese Economic Relationship

China’s president, Xi
Jinping, will meet with President Trump in Florida for two days starting
Thursday. His last state visit in the U.S. was in September 2015
(above).Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The
United States and China are locked in a mutually dependent, frequently
dysfunctional economic partnership. The world’s biggest and
second-biggest economies are like a married couple that complain about
each other constantly yet can’t even contemplate a divorce.

The marriage enters a new phase Thursday, as President Xi Jinping
of China visits for two days of meetings at the Florida estate of a
president who made China a punching bag on the campaign trail.

The
question is whether President Trump can turn his bellicose language
into concrete gains for American companies and workers. A look at the
economics of the relationship between the nations, and conversations
with former officials with battle scars from past negotiations, shows a
path for getting a better deal.

That
path to success may not include the kind of flashy, headline-generating
announcements that the Trump administration has tended to celebrate.

It’s not about the currency (for now)

In February, Mr. Trump called China
the “grand champions at manipulation of currency.” During the campaign,
too, he frequently assailed China for artificially reducing the value
of the renminbi to favor its companies versus American and other
competitors.

It
is a view that is outdated. For years, China did intervene in financial
markets to depress the value of its currency. But now it is intervening
to keep the yuan from falling — actually doing the opposite of what Mr.
Trump alleged. Economists generally think that the Chinese currency is
close to the levels that would be set by purely market forces.

That
doesn’t mean currencies shouldn’t come up at Mar-a-Lago. This moment of
relative peace between the countries on currency policy could be the
ideal time to develop an understanding for the future.

“I
think currency is still an issue, but it doesn’t make sense to discuss
it under the rubric of manipulation,” said Brad Setser, a senior fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations. “China is managing its currency;
it’s just that it’s managing it right now in a way that is relatively
advantageous to the United States. That understanding of how China
intends to manage its currency in the future remains a top-order issue.”

In
other words, Mr. Trump could use this moment not to beat China over the
head about what happened in the past, or where things stand today, but
to develop an agreement on what it will do in the future, if a day comes
when market forces start pushing the yuan upward.

Focus on the causes of the trade deficit, not the number

Mr.
Trump has similarly assailed the United States trade deficit with China
and other countries, often characterizing it as a scorecard, evidence
that China is winning at trade and the United States losing, to the tune
of $310 billion a year.

The
reality is more nuanced. The persistent trade deficit is indeed
problematic, but that’s because of the factors that drive it and the
imbalances they cause to build. Simply targeting a lower trade deficit
could well leave both American and Chinese workers worse off, if carried
out the wrong way. For example, a trade war that significantly reduces
American imports from China while also reducing American exports to
China would reduce the trade deficit but would mean lower incomes and
fewer jobs in both countries.

The
U.S.-China trade imbalance is indeed driven in part by trade barriers
that China enacts against American companies, including a 25 percent
tariff on imported automobiles and various quotas and restrictions that
reduce agricultural imports. If Mr. Trump can persuade China to loosen
those restrictions, it might close the trade deficit by increasing
American exports — the healthy kind of trade rebalancing.

But
the trade gap isn’t driven just by the details of trade arrangements.
It is also driven by the flow of capital between countries. To
oversimplify, when a company sells more abroad than it buys, it has to
do something with that money.

The
flip side of a current account deficit, as an economist might put it,
is a capital account surplus. China’s trade imbalances are a function
not only of its trade practices, but also of its very high levels of
savings, which are in turn invested around the world.

For
China to change that, it would have to change the very structure of its
economy: away from savings and big-ticket infrastructure investments,
and toward consumer demand — including for products made both
domestically and abroad.

If
the Trump administration really wants the trade deficit with China to
come down over time, it’s not enough to look at only one side of the
international economic ledger — flows of goods — while ignoring the flow
of capital.

In
practice, this would mean making demands on some issues that might seem
like purely domestic concerns only tangentially related to trade. That
might include pushing China to allow more troubled state-owned
enterprises to fail, so that their accumulated profits might be spread
through the Chinese economy instead of funneled toward the purchase of
foreign assets. A more generous pension system might spur demand among
older Chinese citizens.

If
China allowed global financial companies more access to its market, it
could both encourage more domestic spending and give a major American
industry an opportunity it has long sought.

Use leverage carefully

President
Trump prides himself on being a dealmaker, and his negotiating style is
to lay out extreme requests in order to work back to agreement. But
resetting economic relations with China will prove trickier than any
real estate deal.

One
of the fundamental realities of the relationship is that while neither
side is wholly comfortable with how it works, these are big, powerful
countries that can’t be easily swayed by what a country on the other
side of the Pacific Ocean wants to happen. The leverage that each side
has to deploy is limited — at least so long as neither country is
willing to shoot itself in the foot.

So,
for example, in trying to get more favorable Chinese treatment of
American goods and services, the standard menu of carrots Mr. Trump has
to offer for compliance is relatively modest. China wants things like
United States membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
that it started, and support for its “One Belt, One Road” program to build better transportation infrastructure stretching from Southeast Asia to Europe.

Bigger Chinese goals, like achieving “market economy” status
in the World Trade Organization, are likely to be nonstarters unless
the country makes major progress on allowing international companies
better access to its market.

The
United States could conceivably have more negotiating leverage by
threatening punitive tariffs or other aggressive measures, as Mr. Trump
did during his campaign, but those actions are just as likely to produce
a painful blowback from China that damages the United States.

Then there are noneconomic issues, which invariably could shape the contours of economic relationships.

“In
the Obama administration, China was a good citizen cooperating with us
on Iran sanctions and on climate change, which I think made it hard for
the U.S. to contemplate anything that harsh in the trade arena,” said
David Dollar, a former Treasury Department official in Beijing and now a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “You could have something
similar if the Trump administration wants China to cooperate more on
North Korea. That could be hard to turn around and be harsh on them in
the economic realm.”

Be patient, and don’t get distracted by baubles

Mr.
Trump likes to announce big splashy deals, and given that the Chinese
are looking for places to invest their capital in the United States, it
would be easy enough to find something along those lines to announce.

But
in the context of the two giant economies, that kind of thing is small
bore. This flawed economic relationship has been building for a long
time, and the fixes are unlikely to come overnight.

“Mr.
Trump ought to pick the right fights rather than focus on issues that
resonate with his political base but which are unlikely to help U.S.
economic interest in either the short term or long run,” said Eswar
Prasad, an economist at Cornell and author of “Gaining Currency,” a book about China’s role in global finance.

It’s
unlikely that the first meeting between the new president and the
Chinese leader will resolve issues that have been building for years or
even decades. Rather, those who have worked in diplomacy advise looking
beyond the current headlines to make progress on lowering Chinese trade
barriers, increasing its domestic savings and committing not to return
to the days of manipulating its currency lower.

When you’re talking about commerce between two superpowers, things don’t change overnight.

A version of this article appears in print on April 6, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: The Messy State of U.S.-China Ties: What Trump Can Do. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Trump Removes Stephen Bannon From National Security Council Post

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's chief strategist, at the White House on Monday.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON
— For the first 10 weeks of President Trump’s administration, no
adviser loomed larger in the public imagination than Stephen K. Bannon,
the raw and rumpled former chairman of Breitbart News who considers
himself a “virulently anti-establishment” revolutionary out to destroy
the “administrative state.”

But
behind the scenes, White House officials said, the ideologist who
enjoyed the president’s confidence became increasingly embattled as
other advisers, including Mr. Trump’s daughter and son-in-law,
complained about setbacks on health care and immigration. Lately, Mr.
Bannon has been conspicuously absent from some meetings. And now he has
lost his seat at the national security table.

In a move that was widely seen as a sign of changing fortunes, Mr. Trump removed Mr. Bannon, his chief strategist, from the National Security Council’s
cabinet-level “principals committee” on Wednesday. The shift was
orchestrated by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security
adviser, who insisted on purging a political adviser from the Situation
Room where decisions about war and peace are made.

Mr.
Bannon resisted the move, even threatening at one point to quit if it
went forward, according to a White House official who, like others,
insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Bannon’s
camp denied that he had threatened to resign and spent the day spreading
the word that the shift was a natural evolution, not a signal of any
diminution of his outsize influence.

His
allies said privately that Mr. Bannon had been put on the principals
committee to keep an eye on Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser,
Michael T. Flynn, a retired three-star general who lasted just 24 days
before being forced out for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and
other White House officials about what he had discussed with Russia’s
ambassador. With Mr. Flynn gone, these allies said, there was no need
for Mr. Bannon to remain, but they noted that he had kept his security
clearance.

“Susan
Rice operationalized the N.S.C. during the last administration,” Mr.
Bannon said in a statement, referring to President Barack Obama’s
national security adviser. “I was put on the N.S.C. with General Flynn
to ensure that it was de-operationalized. General McMaster has returned
the N.S.C. to its proper function.”

Mr. Bannon did not explain what he meant by “operationalized” or how his presence on the committee had ensured it would not be.

It
was one more drama in a White House consumed by palace intrigue, where
officials jockey for the ear of the president, angle for authority and
seek to place blame for political defeats. Even as Mr. Bannon lost a
national security credential, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law
and senior adviser, seems to be acting as a shadow secretary of state,
visiting Iraq and taking on China, Mexico and Middle East portfolios.

Mr.
Bannon’s many enemies, inside and outside the White House, celebrated
what they saw as a defeat for his brand of fiery, nationalist politics.

“He
didn’t belong on the principals committee to begin with — doesn’t
really belong in the White House at all,” said Representative Adam B.
Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence
Committee. “I hope that this is a sign that McMaster is taking control
of the National Security Council.”

Karl
Rove — who, as senior adviser to President George W. Bush, was not
allowed to join national security meetings — said it was a move back to a
better process. “It was wrong for him to be added in the first place,
and it was right to take him off,” he said.

Even
if Mr. Bannon really was removed only because there was no longer a
need for someone to mind Mr. Flynn, Mr. Rove added, the end result was a
victory for General McMaster. “It’s either a sign of McMaster’s
strength, or the result is it strengthens McMaster,” he said.

Still,
Mr. Bannon, who has been under attack from outside the administration
since the early days of the transition, is a crafty survivor, and
insiders warned that it would be a mistake to underestimate him. When
General McMaster wanted to fire a staff member, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Mr.
Bannon intervened to save his job.

Mr.
Cohen-Watnick had alerted colleagues that Mr. Trump’s associates had
been caught up in surveillance of foreigners, information then shown by
another White House official to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican
of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is
investigating Russian meddling in last year’s election.

James
Jeffrey, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush, said General
McMaster appeared to have “scored one on the presumably more powerful
Bannon,” but cautioned against reading too much into what it meant for
Mr. Bannon. “He seems to be very close to the president and, by most
accounts, still wins many of his battles,” Mr. Jeffrey said.

From
the start, General McMaster intended to revamp the National Security
Council organization that he inherited from Mr. Flynn. The principals
committee, which is led by the national security adviser and includes
the vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary and others, is
the primary policy-making body deciding questions that do not rise to
the level of the president and framing those that do.

The
initial structure approved by Mr. Trump not only gave Mr. Bannon formal
membership on the committee, but also downgraded the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence to
occasional participants as issues demanded.

In
addition to removing Mr. Bannon, the new order issued by Mr. Trump,
dated Tuesday and made public on Wednesday, restored the Joint Chiefs
chairman and intelligence director and added the energy secretary,
C.I.A. director and United Nations ambassador. It also put the Homeland
Security Council under General McMaster rather than making it a separate
entity, as Mr. Trump’s original order had done.

Mr.
Trump was angry over the fallout from his first order, feeling that he
had not been properly warned about its implications. He briefly
considered reversing it the same weekend it was announced, according to a
person with direct knowledge, but decided against it for fear of
creating more of a public storm.

For
the first two months of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Bannon occupied an
unassailable perch at the president’s side — ramming through key
elements of his eclectic and hard-edge populist agenda, including two
executive orders on freezing immigration from several predominantly
Muslim countries. Mr. Trump viewed Mr. Bannon as a street-fighting
kindred spirit who favored his own attack-when-attacked communications
strategy.

But
blunders by Mr. Bannon’s team — especially the first immigration order,
which was rejected by multiple courts — have undermined his position.
His take-no-prisoners style was not a winning strategy on Capitol Hill,
and Mr. Bannon declined to take a significant part. Experienced
politicians, including Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump’s budget director, Mick
Mulvaney, stepped into more expansive roles as negotiations over the
failed health care overhaul dragged on.

Mr.
Trump initially supported Mr. Bannon’s take-it-or-leave-it final
message to holdouts in the House Freedom Caucus. But, needing a win, the
president grew skeptical and authorized Mr. Pence to resume health care
talks, with Mr. Bannon playing more of a supporting role, according to
three people close to Mr. Trump.

Mr.
Bannon has also been at odds with Gary Cohn, the president’s national
economics adviser. Mr. Cohn is close with Mr. Kushner, who has said
privately that he fears that Mr. Bannon plays to the president’s worst
impulses, according to people with direct knowledge of such discussions.

Moreover,
Mr. Bannon’s Svengali-style reputation has chafed on a president who
sees himself as the West Wing’s only leading man. Several associates
said the president had quietly expressed annoyance over the credit Mr.
Bannon had received for setting the agenda — and Mr. Trump was not
pleased by the “President Bannon” puppet-master theme promoted by
magazines, late-night talk shows and Twitter.

Yet
there is a risk for Mr. Trump in appearing to minimize Mr. Bannon, a
hero to the nationalist, anti-immigration base that helped drive Mr.
Trump to an Electoral College victory. With his approval ratings at
historic lows for so early in a presidency, he is counting on the same
people who see Mr. Bannon as their champion — just as Mr. Bannon is
counting on Mr. Trump to retain his place in the White House inner
circle.

Trump’s Gifts to China

Magazines in Beijing on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, before President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, D.C.Credit
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

SINGAPORE — The United States meets China this week in a position of weakness. Since taking office, Donald Trump
has handed China a strategic gift by abandoning a trade pact designed
to offset Chinese power in the region, been obliged to grovel after
offending China over Taiwan, and turned President Xi Jinping of China into an unlikely poster boy for climate change concern and an open global trading system.

So
much for the art of the deal; to Asian nations like Singapore worried
about China’s aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea,
American policy under Trump has looked more like a blink-first exercise.

Now Trump — having given
the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, the full Mar-a-Lago - is
obliged to give Xi the same at his Florida resort. (Angela Merkel,
merely the German chancellor, need not apply.)

Top
of the Florida menu is North Korea and how far China will help Trump in
rolling back Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile program. The thousands
of acres of new land built by China
in the form of artificial islands or expanded reefs in the Spratly
Islands off the coast of the Philippines — an extraordinary act of
lawless territorial expansionism — will also be part of the discussions.
Then of course there’s bilateral trade and Trump’s unhappiness with the
$347 billion
U.S. deficit last year — although with North Korea’s belligerent Kim
now in a position to hit Japan, that feels like a manageable irritant in
the symbiotic U.S.-Chinese economic entanglement.

China will not satisfy the United States on North Korea. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said “strategic patience” is over.
But what does that mean? A pre-emptive American strike is nearly
unthinkable given Kim’s ability to blow up Seoul. It sounds like what
the Trump administration has specialized in: bluster. The Trump foreign
policy doctrine: Shout loud and carry a little stick. When Trump tells
The Financial Times that he can “totally” solve North Korea without China’s help, everyone shrugs at his saber-rattling.

China
has leverage over Kim, but its “strategic patience” with him is
infinite. Its priority is the survival of the totalitarian regime as a
buffer. The dictator is China’s insurance against a nuclear-armed united
Korea at its doorstep. Millions of North Koreans flooding over its
border in the event of a regime collapse is the last thing China wants.

To
Trump’s demands to deliver Kim, China is likely to shrug. Especially if
the president (unlikely scenario) does what he should and tells Xi that
China’s artificial-island push for regional dominance in the South
China Sea is unacceptable.

In
the long run any effective North Korea policy will probably have to
begin with acceptance that denuclearization is no longer possible and
stringent curtailment of Kim is the best bet. Diplomacy is a word that
Trump might usefully add to his vocabulary.

For
countries from Vietnam to Singapore, its absence has been alarming.
Trump’s decision to rip up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious
free-trade arrangement including many countries in the region but not
China, was reckless. China’s pressure on Singapore to choose between the
United States and Beijing — something Singapore rightly refuses to do —
is typical of the increasingly heavy-handed Chinese regional approach.
With the T.P.P. dead, China is emboldened.

Already
last year it had impounded some Singaporean military vehicles to signal
impatience with Singapore’s close relations with Taiwan. It has also
been critical of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore when he
raises concerns over China’s South China Sea aggrandizement. For the
Chinese, “silence is golden” when it comes to all that new land for
runways, radars and the like in waters far from its shore. But for
Singapore, the sea is its lifeline. It cannot stay quiet; and it needs
offsetting American power in Asia to keep those sea-lanes open.

Here
we get to the nub of what should be on the Trump-Xi agenda. As Razeen
Sally, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy, told me: “In the end it’s about free people and open societies.
Are we going to have more or less of that in this part of the world?
That is why more Chinese domination in Asia would be so ominous.”

But
of course the Trump foreign policy is an experiment in a valueless,
transactional approach to the world from which the American idea has
been stripped.

Anthony
Miller, an American businessman in Japan, wrote to me recently about a
meeting with a senior Japanese university official who had asked him why
Japan should align itself with America if there is no longer “a mutual
belief in democracy, free trade and liberal values.” Miller concluded of
Trump: “The damage he is doing to the underpinnings of liberal
democracy is tremendous.”

When
Lee, the Singapore prime minister, called Trump in early December he
mentioned the free trade agreement between the United States and
Singapore. The then president-elect, I was told, had no idea of its
existence. Nor did Trump know that the United States has a trade surplus
with Singapore.

Unpreparedness is bad. It’s worse when combined with bluster and recklessness. That’s why China is winning.

President Trump on Friday. He
unleashed a series of Twitter posts on Monday, claiming once again that
the Obama administration spied on him, and he attacked Hillary Clinton.Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times

WASHINGTON
— President Trump sought to turn attention away from the Russia
investigation on Monday, saying that “the real story” was what he called
a “crooked scheme against us” by President Barack Obama’s team to mine American intelligence reports for information about him during last year’s presidential campaign.

The
president’s broadside against his predecessor coincided with a string
of reports in conservative news media outlets that Susan E. Rice, Mr.
Obama’s national security adviser, requested the identities of Americans
who were cited in intelligence reports about surveillance of foreign
officials, and who were connected with Mr. Trump’s campaign or
transition.

Former
national security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
described the requests as normal and said they were justified by the
need for the president’s top security adviser to understand the context
of reports sent to her by the nation’s intelligence agencies.

The
process of “unmasking” Americans whose names are redacted in
intelligence reports, they said, is not the same thing as leaking them
publicly.

But
Mr. Trump and his allies seized on the news media reports to bolster
his case that he was targeted by the departing administration for
political reasons. As the F.B.I. and congressional committees
investigate contacts that associates of Mr. Trump had with Russian
officials and business figures, the president argued that he was the
victim of dirty tricks and that, if anything, it was associates of his
defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, who were doing the bidding of Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

“Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter
early Monday morning in the opening burst of four messages aimed at Mr.
Obama, Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats. “‘Spied on before nomination.’
The real story.”

In another post on Twitter
later in the morning, he added: “@FoxNews from multiple sources: ‘There
was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This
is unprecedented.’ @FBI”

At
his daily briefing later in the day, Sean Spicer, the White House press
secretary, said he would not discuss the reports about Ms. Rice
specifically. “There’s a troubling direction that some of this is going
in, but we’re going to let this review go on before we jump to it,” he
said.

He
chided reporters for showing more interest in the investigation into
contacts between Mr. Trump’s team and Russia than in the conduct of Mr.
Obama’s White House.

Mr.
Trump first accused Mr. Obama a month ago of tapping his phones at
Trump Tower during the campaign last year. He has refused to back down,
even though Mr. Obama and his top aides have adamantly denied it. The F.B.I. director
and the former director of national intelligence have said the phone
tapping charge is not true, and congressional leaders of both parties
have said they have seen no evidence of it.

In
an interview broadcast on BBC on Monday evening, John O. Brennan, the
C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, chided Mr. Trump for making an
unsubstantiated allegation against the former president. Mr. Trump, he
said, has “a solemn obligation” to provide information “that is
accurate, that is measured and that is not just a spontaneous or
impulsive number of words.”

While
other officials have said there is no convincing evidence so far of
collusion between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russian officials who meddled
in last year’s election, Mr. Brennan said that “it would be premature
at this time to make any determination, or rule anything out.” At the
same time, he agreed with Mr. Trump about the seriousness of leaks to
the news media in recent weeks. “These leaks are appalling,” he said.
“They need to stop.”

In
trying to combat what Mr. Trump’s aides see as a concerted campaign of
leaks to undermine his legitimacy, the White House last month provided intelligence to Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, showing that the president or his associates may have been “incidentally” swept up
in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies last year. Since Mr.
Nunes made that public, Mr. Trump’s team has focused on whether Mr.
Obama’s White House improperly used that information.

Republicans pointed to the reports about Ms. Rice on Monday. “Smoking gun found!” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote on Twitter. “Obama pal and noted dissembler Susan Rice said to have been spying on Trump campaign.”

Intelligence
officials are supposed to guard the privacy of Americans caught up in
routine eavesdropping of foreign officials. In daily intelligence
reports to officials like Ms. Rice, they typically refer to Americans
who came up in recorded conversations as U.S. Person One or U.S. Person
Two. But high-ranking officials, as Ms. Rice was, can ask intelligence
briefers to provide names to better understand the meaning of the
report.

It
remains unclear how many names were unmasked by Ms. Rice. But several
former officials said she did so for legitimate reasons: The Obama White
House was concerned during the election about continuing attempts by
the Russian government to hack Democratic email accounts and interfere
in the campaign. Ms. Rice, they said, needed to understand if Americans
were involved in that.

They
also said Mr. Obama’s advisers worried during the transition — as he
imposed sanctions on Russia for its election meddling — that the Trump
transition team was trying to undermine American policy before coming to
office.

The
content of the intelligence reports at issue remains unclear. Some
officials have said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and
other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop
contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle before his
inauguration.

The
former national security officials’ description of the intelligence is
in line with Mr. Nunes’s characterization of the material, which he said
was not related to the Russia investigations when he disclosed its
existence.

The
White House and Mr. Nunes have not made clear whether they are
concerned that actual names had been unmasked in reports, or whether one
could tell who the person being discussed was from their context.

But
at least one name is known to have been unmasked: Michael T. Flynn, the
former national security adviser. He was selected for that post during
American surveillance of Russia’s ambassador in December, when the two
talked about the sanctions Mr. Obama had just imposed on Moscow.

Mr. Flynn was forced out
in February after it emerged that he had misled Vice President Mike
Pence about the nature of the calls. But Mr. Trump and other White House
officials have suggested that the real problem in the Flynn case
involved the leaks about his calls with the Russian envoy, not the
content of the calls themselves — or what Mr. Flynn did or did not tell
colleagues about his communications.

Intelligence
agencies are permitted to record calls even if they involve Americans,
and any American citizen who talks with, messages or emails a foreign
official under surveillance would be picked up by intelligence agencies.
During the transition, this would have included Trump associates and
even Obama administration officials.

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2017, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Tries to Deflect Russia Scrutiny, Citing a ‘Crooked Scheme’ by Obama. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Trump Is Wimping Out on Trade

President Trump before signing two executive orders in the Oval Office on Friday.Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times

During the campaign, Donald Trump talked loudly and often about how he was going to renegotiate America’s “horrible trade deals,”
bringing back millions of good jobs. So far, however, nothing has
happened. Not only is Trumpist trade policy — Trumptrade? — nowhere to
be seen in practice; there isn’t even any indication of what it will
involve.

So
on Friday the White House scheduled a ceremony in which Mr. Trump would
sign two new executive orders on trade. The goal, presumably, was to
counteract the growing impression that his bombast on trade was sound
and fury signifying nothing.

Unfortunately,
the executive orders in question were, to use the technical term,
nothingburgers. One called for a report on the causes of the trade
deficit; wait, they’re just starting to study the issue? The other
addressed some minor issues of tariff collection, and its content
apparently duplicated an act President Obama already signed last year.

Not
surprisingly, reporters at the event questioned the president, not
about trade, but about Michael Flynn and the Russia connection. Mr.
Trump then walked out
of the room — without signing the orders. (Vice President Mike Pence
gathered them up, and the White House claims that they were signed
later.)

The fiasco perfectly encapsulated what’s looking more and more like a failed agenda.

Business seems to have decided that Mr. Trump is a paper tiger on trade: The flow of corporate relocations
to Mexico, which slowed briefly while C.E.O.s tried to curry favor with
the new president, has resumed. Trade policy by tweet, it appears, has
run its course.

Investors seem to have reached the same conclusion: The Mexican peso plunged 16 percent after the election, but since Inauguration Day it has recovered almost all the lost ground.

Oh,
and last week a draft proposal for revising the North American Free
Trade Agreement circulated around Congress; instead of sweeping changes
in what candidate Trump called the “worst trade deal” ever signed, the administration appears to be seeking only modest tweaks.

This
surely isn’t what working-class Trump supporters thought they were
voting for. So why can Trumpist trade policy be summarized — to quote
The Times’s Binyamin Appelbaum — as “talk loudly and carry a small stick”? Let me give two reasons.

First,
back when Mr. Trump was railing against trade deals, he had no idea
what he was talking about. (I know, you’re shocked to hear that.)

For
example, listening to the Tweeter-in-chief, you’d think that Nafta was a
big giveaway by the United States, which got nothing in return. In
fact, Mexico drastically cut its tariffs on goods imported from the U.S., in return for much smaller cuts on the U.S. side.

Or take Mr. Trump’s repeated claims that China gains a competitive advantage by manipulating its currency.
That was true six years ago, but it’s not true now. These days China is
actually intervening to keep its currency up, not down.

Talking
nonsense about trade didn’t hurt Mr. Trump during the campaign. But now
he’s finding out that those grossly unfair trade deals he promised to
renegotiate aren’t all that unfair, after all, leaving him with no idea
what to do next.

Which
brings me to Trumptrade’s second big obstacle: Whatever you think of
past trade agreements, trade is now deeply embedded in the economy.

Consider the case of automobiles.
At this point it makes little sense to talk about a U.S. auto industry,
a Canadian auto industry or a Mexican auto industry. What we have
instead is a tightly integrated North American industry, in which
vehicles and components crisscross the continent, with almost every
finished car containing components from all three nations.

Does
it have to be this way? No. Slap on 30 percent tariffs, and after a few
years those national industries would separate again. But the
transition would be chaotic and painful.

Economists talk, with considerable justification, about the “China shock”:
the disruptive effect on jobs and communities of the rapid growth of
Chinese exports from the 1990s through 2007. But reversing globalization
now would produce an equally painful “Trump shock,” disrupting jobs and
communities all over again — and would also be painful for some of the
big corporate interests that, strange to say, have a lot of influence in
this supposedly populist regime.

The
point is that at a deep level Trumptrade is running into the same wall
that caused Trumpcare to crash and burn. Mr. Trump came into office
talking big, sure that his predecessors had messed everything up and he —
he alone — could do far better. And millions of voters believed him.

But governing America isn’t like reality TV. A few weeks ago Mr. Trump whined, “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” Now, one suspects, he’s saying the same thing about trade policy.

Trump Needs a Brain

President Donald Trump at The White House on Friday.Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times

THE series of columns I’ve been writing lately, floating implausible proposals
for an ideologically unstable age, has been a useful way of avoiding
the depressing subject of the Trump administration’s first 100 days —
because really, in the face of such incompetence and chaos, what is
there to say?

But
precisely because this administration seems so hopeless, any
constructive advice for the Trump White House automatically falls into
the category of implausible ideas. So I can continue my ongoing series
while also talking about Donald Trump — by proposing, as this week’s
unlikely-to-happen proposal, that our president should go out and get
himself a brain.

I do not mean a vat-grown cerebral cortex cooked up in some underground anti-aging lab funded by Silicon Valley immortalists
… though I gather those may be soon available as well. I mean a brain
in the sense that people (unkindly, but not inaccurately) used the term
to describe Bill Kristol when he was the aide-de-camp to Vice President
Dan Quayle 25 years ago: a person, or better a group of persons, who can
tell Trump what specific policies he ought to support.

Because
a core weakness of this White House, more devastating (for now) than
the pugilistic tweets and permanent swirl of scandal, is the absence of
anyone who seems to have thought through how one might translate
Trumpism, the populist nationalism on which the president campaigned,
into substantive policy on any specific issue except a temporary visa
freeze.

The dearth of Trumpists in official Washington was always going to be a major problem for this administration, both in staffing the White House and in negotiating with Congress. But it’s been worse than anticipated, because Trump himself doesn’t know what he wants to do on major issues and there’s nobody in his innermost circle who seems to have a compelling vision that might guide him.

A
certain Steve Bannon — perhaps you’ve heard of him — was supposed to
help Trump figure all this out, perhaps with an assist from Michael Anton,
the once-pseudonymous pro-Trump essayist now ensconced in the National
Security Council. But there’s little evidence that either man’s policy
vision has advanced much beyond, “The conservative movement has failed,
let’s try something else.” Bannon seems to have been particularly
useless during the health care negotiations, encouraging Trump to work with the Freedom Caucus one day and trying to bully them the next, while throwing out various critiques of the Paul Ryan bill that didn’t point toward anything coherent.

It
was probably unreasonable to expect a sixtysomething whose life
experience is all in media and Hollywood to suddenly turn into a one-man
think tank, no matter how many French far-right agitators
he name-drops. But a think tank is basically what Trump needs: a small
brain trust committed to figuring out what parts of the mainstream
G.O.P. vision he should support and what heterodoxies it makes sense for
him to champion, so that he isn’t stuck governing on the Heritage
Foundation’s austerity budgets while his friends outside the
administration urge him to expand Medicaid.

Some Trump supporters — the folks behind the new journal American Affairs,
most notably — are trying to play that role already. But they’re
getting going slowly; Trump needs something sooner, faster, now. He
needs, in effect, a think tank inside the White House: a small group,
separate from the process-oriented Domestic Policy Council, whose only
task is to brief the president regularly on how Trumpist premises should
shape any given legislative deal.

The
way things are going, there won’t be many such deals struck. But this
brain trust would have a longer-term purpose, too: It would be assigned
to build up an easy-to-explain agenda that Trumpish candidates could run
on in 2018, that Trump could champion if he tries to triangulate
between Ryan and the Democrats, and that the president could campaign on
when he runs for re-election. (Aren’t you excited for 2020, dear
reader?)

Who
might staff it? The people involved with American Affairs would be
candidates, but I would also look to other dissident-conservative
publications like The American Conservative, junior (that is, not yet
set in their views) staff at places like Heritage and the American
Enterprise Institute, lesser known right-leaning outfits like the
Institute for Family Studies, and the offices of creative populists like
Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Possible brain trusters might include figures
like F. H. Buckley, the George Mason law professor and Trump
speechwriter who recently urged the president to come out for single-payer; Mickey Kaus, the once-liberal blogger turned Trumpista; and Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of a forthcoming book on Reagan’s populism.

All
of this assumes that Trump cares about Trumpism as something more than a
grift, and that he can accept advice and counsel in a sustained way,
without changing his mind the instant someone makes a different case. As
I said, it’s a deeply implausible idea.

But so is every solution to this White House’s struggles — and we’ve still got most of four years left to go.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 2, 2017, on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Needs a Brain. Today's Paper|Subscribe

In the Garden: A Welcome Sign of Spring

By Charles Kidder

Perhaps
the first plant I could recognize and name as a child was the daffodil,
a welcome sight and fragrance after a long New York winter. And
although native to the Mediterranean, daffodils (Narcissus species) have
been in Virginia since at least the middle of the seventeenth century.

Beginning in the 1890s, Gloucester County became a
center of daffodil production for much of the eastern United States.
Much of this revolved around “wild” or naturalized daffodils that were
cut and shipped north. By the middle of the twentieth century, this
industry was rapidly dying off for a variety of reasons. But Gloucester
County still has one daffodil breeder of note and continues to celebrate
its floral heritage with the Daffodil Festival on the last weekend of
March. More on that later.

The various Narcissus species, hybrids and
cultivars are commonly referred to as either daffodils, jonquils or even
simply narcissus, the latter especially when referring to the paper
whites commonly forced indoors. The term jonquil is commonly used in
certain regions for any daffodil, but technically refers only to one
group that has narrow reed-like foliage. The various daffodils are
divided into 13 divisions—or 12, if you believe some sources—that are
based on flower shape and heritage. For example, Division 1 daffodils
are called Trumpets, since the central portion or trumpet is quite long.
Regardless of division, colors range from yellow to white, perhaps with
some pink or orange in the trumpets. If you seek out specialty
nurseries, hundreds of cultivars are available.

All daffodils have similar cultural requirements.
As for the amount of sun they want, the more the better. Part sun, or
about six hours per day, is sufficient, but less sun than that will lead
to reduced blooming, even though the plants may soldier on for a long
time. And sunlight in a deciduous woodland does not really count as full
sunlight. As for soil, good drainage is important to avoid bulb rot. If
your soil is unusually sodden, either amend it with gravel or put
daffodils in a raised bed.

Daffodil bulbs should be planted at a depth equal
to about three times their diameter, so a two-inch bulb should be six
inches deep. Six inches is also a good distance between bulbs. Farther
apart and they lose visual impact; closer, and they will require
division sooner. Bulbs will look funny planted like soldiers in a
straight line, so if you have ten bulbs, better to either plant them in
two groups of five, or in a staggered double row. If you are planting a
very large number, you can avoid an overly orderly appearance by picking
up a handful and tossing them to the general area in which you wish to
plant.

There are any number of “new, improved,
back-saving!!” bulb planters out there. Use whatever works best for you,
which might just be an ordinary trowel or even a garden shovel. And
remember: nothing says you have to plant one bulb at a time. You can
take a spade and dig up a good-sized hole with one or two punches, and
then throw in three to five bulbs. For even larger areas, a rototiller
might be the quickest option. And do the bulbs have to be pointy-side
up? That’s the ideal, but the shoot will always get turned around and
pointed toward the sky anyway. If you’re in a hurry, ensuring that the
bulbs are at least on their side would be a good compromise.

Amending your soil with compost will definitely
give your daffodils a boost, but there’s no need to fertilize when
planting—which of course is not now, but in mid-to-late fall. In very
early spring, a balanced fertilizer—about 5-5-5 or 10-10-10 is
best—should be sprinkled around the plants just as their foliage
emerges. (You can also do this in the fall, but that assumes you’ll
remember where your daffodils are!) And speaking of feeding your
daffodils, we all know what to do with their foliage, which is there to
provide nutrients for the bulb, right? Doing nothing is perfectly okay.
Or when the foliage turns yellow and lies on the ground, you can throw
some mulch on it if the sight offends you. Do not cut the foliage off
while it’s still green or tie it up in cutesy knots! That prevents
movement of nutrients down to the bulb; plus, it takes a lot of valuable
gardening time.

But back to Gloucester County. The annual Daffodil
Festival takes place on the last weekend of March and includes the usual
attractions: a parade, a queen, entertainers, a race, a car show, and
of course, daffodils. (A full schedule is available on the county’s
website. There’s also a link to the history of daffodil farming in this
corner of Virginia.) On Saturday they will be running frequent buses
over to Brent and Becky’s Bulbs for tours and shopping. Brent and Becky
Heath own a business that has been in the family for several
generations, at one time operating as the Daffodil Mart. Although they
now sell many other types of bulbs, daffodils are still a specialty,
with over 200 varieties available.

Once planted, daffodils tend to naturalize, meaning
they spread slowly, but never seem to become invasive. Part of their
secret to longevity might be their poisonous nature: deer and other
critters don’t bother them, so you can enjoy your host of daffodils for
many years.

We
were going to Canada in the summer. “When we are in Edmonton”, I said
to Christoph Cremer, “let’s make a quick trip to Seattle”. And that’s
how it happened. At Edmonton Airport we climbed into a plane and two
hours later we landed in the city where Betty had lived. I was so happy
to be in Seattle at last and to be able to trace Betty’s tracks!

Wolfgang Hampel had told Betty’s friends about our arrival.They
were happy to plan a small marathon through the town and it’s
surroundings with us. We only had a few days free. One should not
underestimate Wolfgang’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty’s friends,
even though it was holiday time. E-mails flew backwards and forwards
between Heidelberg and Seattle, and soon a well prepared itinerary was
ready for us. Shortly before my departure Wolfgang handed me several
parcels, presents for Betty MacDonald's friends. I rushed to pack the
heavy gifts in my luggage but because of the extra weight had to throw
out a pair of pajamas!

After we had landed we took a taxi to the
Hotel in downtown Seattle. I was so curious to see everything. I
turned my head in all directions like one of the hungry hens from
Betty’s farm searching for food! Fortunately it was quite a short
journey otherwise I would have lost my head like a loose screw!Our
hotel room was on the 22nd floor and looked directly out onto the
16-lane highway. There might have been even more than 16 but it made me
too giddy to count! It was like a glimpse of hell! “And is this
Seattle?” I asked myself. I was horrified! The cars racing by were
enough to drive one mad. The traffic roared by day and night. We
immediately contacted Betty MacDonald's friends and let them know we had
arrived and they confirmed the times when we should see them.

On
the next morning I planned my first excursion tracing Betty’s tracks. I
spread out the map of Seattle. “Oh dear” I realized “the Olympic
Peninsula is much too far away for me to get there.” Betty nodded to me! “Very difficult, Letizia, without a car.”

“But I so much wanted to see your chicken farm”

“My chickens are no longer there and you can admire the mountains from a distance”

But
I wanted to go there. I left the hotel and walked to the waterfront
where the State Ferry terminal is. Mamma mia, the streets in Seattle are
so steep! I couldn’t prevent my feet from running down the hill. Why
hadn’t I asked for brakes to be fixed on my shoes? I looked at the
drivers. How incredibly good they must be to accelerate away from the
red traffic lights. The people were walking uphill towards me as briskly
as agile salmon. Good heavens, these Americans! I tried to keep my
balance. The force of gravity is relentless. I grasped hold of objects
where I could and staggered down.In Canada a friend had warned me that in Seattle I would see a lot of people with crutches.

Betty laughed. “ It’s not surprising, Letizia, walking salmon don’t fall directly into the soft mouth of a bear!”“ Betty, stop making these gruesome remarks. We are not in Firlands!”

I
went further. Like a small deranged ant at the foot of a palace monster
I came to a tunnel. The noise was unbearable. On the motorway, “The
Alaskan Way Viaduct”, cars, busses and trucks were driving at the speed
of light right over my head. They puffed out their poisonous gas into
the open balconies and cultivated terraces of the luxurious sky-
scrapers without a thought in the world. America! You are crazy!“Betty,
are all people in Seattle deaf? Or is it perhaps a privilege for
wealthy people to be able to enjoy having cars so near to their eyes and
noses to save them from boredom?”

“When the fog democratically allows everything to disappear into nothing, it makes a bit of a change, Letizia”

“ Your irony is incorrigible, Betty, but tell me, Seattle is meant to be a beautiful city, But where?”I had at last reached the State Ferry terminal.

“No
Madam, the ferry for Vashon Island doesn’t start from here,” one of the
men in the ticket office tells me. ”Take a buss and go to the ferry
terminal in West Seattle.”Betty explained to me “The island lies in
Puget Sound and not in Elliott Bay! It is opposite the airport. You must
have seen it when you were landing!”“Betty, when I am landing I shut my eyes and pray!”

It’s time for lunch. The weather is beautiful and warm. Who said to me that it always rains here?“Sure
to be some envious man who wanted to frighten you away from coming to
Seattle. The city is really beautiful, you’ll see. Stay by the
waterfront, choose the best restaurant with a view of Elliott Bay and
enjoy it.”“Thank you Betty!”I find a table on the
terrace of “Elliott’s Oyster House”. The view of the island is
wonderful. It lies quietly in the sun like a green fleecy cushion on the
blue water. Betty plays with my words:“Vashon Island is a big
cushion, even bigger than Bainbridge which you see in front of your
eyes, Letizia. The islands look similar. They have well kept houses and
beautiful gardens”.

I relax during this introduction, “Bainbridge” you are Vashon Island, and order a mineral water.

“At one time the hotel belonging to the parents of Monica Sone stood on the waterfront.”“Oh, of your friend Kimi!” Unfortunately I forget to ask Betty exactly where it was.

My mind wanders and I think of my mountain hike back to the hotel! “Why is there no donkey for tourists?” Betty laughs:

“I’m sure you can walk back to the hotel. “Letizia can do everything.””

“Yes, Betty, I am my own donkey!”But
I don’t remember that San Francisco is so steep. It doesn’t matter, I
sit and wait. The waiter comes and brings me the menu. I almost fall off
my chair!“ What, you have geoduck on the menu! I have to try it” (I
confess I hate the look of geoduck meat. Betty’s recipe with the pieces
made me feel quite sick – I must try Betty’s favourite dish!)“Proof that you love me!” said Betty enthusiastically “ Isn’t the way to the heart through the stomach?”

I order the geoduck. The waiter looks at me. He would have liked to recommend oysters. “Geoduck no good for you!”Had he perhaps read my deepest thoughts? Fate! Then no geoduck. “No good for me.”“Neither geoduck nor tuberculosis in Seattle” whispered Betty in my ear! “Oh Betty, my best friend, you take such good care of me!”

I order salmon with salad.

“Which salmon? Those that swim in water or those that run through Seattle?”

“Betty, I believe you want me to have a taste of your black humour.”

“Enjoy it then, Letizia.”During lunch we talked about tuberculosis, and that quite spoilt our appetite.“Have you read my book “The Plague and I”?”

“Oh Betty, I’ve started to read it twice but both times I felt so sad I had to stop again!”

“But
why?” asked Betty “Nearly everybody has tuberculosis! I recovered very
quickly and put on 20 pounds! There was no talk of me wasting away! What
did you think of my jokes in the book?”

“Those would have been a
good reason for choosing another sanitorium. I would have been afraid
of becoming a victim of your humour! You would have certainly given me a
nickname! You always thought up such amusing names!” Betty laughed.

“You’re
right. I would have called you “Roman nose”. I would have said to Urbi
and Orbi “ Early this morning “Roman nose” was brought here. She speaks
broken English, doesn’t eat geoduck but she does love cats.”

“Oh
Betty, I would have felt so ashamed to cough. To cough in your presence,
how embarrassing! You would have talked about how I coughed, how many
coughs!”

“It depends on that “how”, Letizia!”

“Please,
leave Goethe quotations out of it. You have certainly learnt from the
Indians how to differentiate between noises. It’s incredible how you
can distinguish between so many sorts of cough! At least 10!”

“So few?”

”And
also your descriptions of the patients and the nurses were pitiless. An
artistic revenge! The smallest pimple on their face didn’t escape your
notice! Amazing.”

“ I was also pitiless to myself. Don’t forget my irony against myself!”

Betty
was silent. She was thinking about Kimi, the “Princess” from Japan! No,
she had only written good things about her best friend, Monica Sone, in
her book “The Plague and I”. A deep friendship had started in the
hospital. The pearl that developed from the illness.“Isn’t it
wonderful, Betty, that an unknown seed can make its way into a mollusk
in the sea and develop into a beautiful jewel?” Betty is paying
attention.

“Betty, the friendship between you and Monica reminds
me of Goethe’s poem “Gingo-Biloba”. You must know it?” Betty nods and I
begin to recite it:

The leaf of this Eastern treeWhich has been entrusted to my gardenOffers a feast of secret significance,For the edification of the initiate.

Is it one living thing.That has become divided within itself?Are these two who have chosen each other,So that we know them as one?

The
friendship with Monica is like the wonderful gingo-biloba leaf, the
tree from the east. Betty was touched. There was a deep feeling of trust
between us. “Our friendship never broke up, partly because she was
in distress, endangered by the deadly illness. We understood and
supplemented each other. We were like one lung with two lobes, one from
the east and one from the west!”“A beautiful picture, Betty. You were like two red gingo-biloba leaves!”

Betty
was sad and said ” Monica, although Japanese, before she really knew me
felt she was also an American. But she was interned in America,
Letizia, during the second world war. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Betty,
I never knew her personally. I have only seen her on a video, but what
dignity in her face, and she speaks and moves so gracefully!”

“Fate could not change her”

“Yes, Betty, like the gingo-biloba tree in Hiroshima. It was the only tree that blossomed again after the atom bomb!”

The
bill came and I paid at once. In America one is urged away from the
table when one has finished eating. If one wants to go on chatting one
has to order something else.“That’s why all those people gossiping
at the tables are so fat!” Betty remarks. “Haven’t you seen how many
massively obese people walk around in the streets of America. Like
dustbins that have never been emptied!” With this typically
unsentimental remark Betty ended our conversation.

Ciao! I so
enjoyed the talk; the humour, the irony and the empathy. I waved to her
and now I too felt like moving! I take a lovely walk along the
waterfront.

Now I am back in Heidelberg and when I think about
how Betty’s “Princessin” left this world on September 5th and that in
August I was speaking about her with Betty in Seattle I feel very sad.
The readers who knew her well (we feel that every author and hero of a
book is nearer to us than our fleeting neighbours next door) yes we, who
thought of her as immortal, cannot believe that even she would die
after 92 years. How unforeseen and unexpected that her death should come
four days after her birthday on September 1th. On September 5th I was
on my way to Turkey, once again in seventh heaven, looking back on the
unforgettable days in Seattle. I was flying from west to east towards
the rising sun.

About Me

Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.